Keep a’knockin but ya’can’t come in!!

A very long time back, I was selected, (selected that is on the basis of, “who sits there, does that!) to take part in our Grammar School Nativity Play. Now the play itself was quite a big deal in our school, and every year a single theme was chosen, and although the basics, such as Mary, Joseph, Baby etc. remained as constants, the supporting cast altered according to the master who authored that year’s script!So there I was, all togged out in a very ‘natty’ Roman Centurion’s cloak, uniform etc. including a sword which was just a little bit too long for me, as I was only four foot ten tall when I was fifteen! (Late bloomer or something!) My part, which was of course crucial to the plot, was to send a soldier to demand a room at the inn, and to express annoyance at the very idea of a Roman Centurion being turned away from a warm fire etc.!

So the soldier returns with the bad news that all the rooms are full, and my line was to step forward while saying, “This is the last straw!” Which would normally have worked except that my sword, which I previously mentioned was rather long, caught some hay as I swept it forwards, so that this big clump of hay landed about four feet in front of me after what I do admit was a rather deft curving motion through the air! Of course this particular piece of theatre brought the house down, much to the displeasure of our headmaster, who got up, halted the play and ranted on for about three minutes about the sanctity of the play, and how we weren’t supposed to laugh at a Nativity Play, and on, and on, and on!

The ONLY person to get off ‘scott free’ was me, as I was deemed innocent! Happy days indeed!

“Sun’s up; come on down!”

Visited the South African tourism website, and read all about the wonders of the ‘South African Experience‘.

Pity the site doesn’t also expand upon the 18,000-odd murders committed last year, or the horrific rise in the overall crime rate, or even the profligacy of their so-called Govermment Ministers. Equally deserving of some wider publicity is the new approach to Public Health, for example, or the total disappearance of the ’shanty-towns’ which were the perennial disgrace of South African cities. They’re still there of course, and much larger, dirtier and infinitely more dangerous, but they are now ‘Informal Settlements’ now, the new South Africa doesn’t have any ‘Shanties’ any more!

Alas with grief, our hearts are riven!!

News just released holds the key to England’s cricketing Test hopes.

 The first document to be sent out over the wires proved to be totally unrealistic, as it contained the following plans for the Melbourne Test:-

 Score lots and lots of runs!  Bowl them all out in double quick time!

Score more runs!!   Bowl the Aussies out again!

 

But the document was later claimed to be a forgery, as no England team was thought capable of doing the job laid out within the leaked document!

“We’re all doomed; I tell you!”

Little-read piece in the UPI webpages about a terrible shortage in some Scottish Regiments. Seems that the Ministry of Defence decided to go out to Tender for a century-old contract for Highland Kilts, and the new guy has produced only 341 ‘trial kilts’, leaving the balance outstanding.

Seems as though their CHEEKS are not the only things red!

A friendlier way to die!!!

Read an item about the food which is served to our kids, and how the meat is ‘halal’ which is fanatic-speak for animals who have died through having their throats cut and allowed to bleed out. This charming practice which is held in high esteem by muslims and jewish people alike, is in contradiction to the usual strict animal laws operating within Britain, and they are allowed to get away with it because it’s to do with their religion!

So the average UK parent, is unknowingly pledging a silent allegiance to either Juda-ism or Islam, because the school crowd haven’t told anyone that it’s well, sort of ‘one size fits all’, so like it or lump it!!!

If you swing upon a star!

A Fulcrum:    A projecting handle used to adjust or operate a mechanism. 

Straight-laced?

So you’re queer, and you’re out, and lo-and-behold, no-one gives a damn! At the same time, two lesbian friends of yours come out at the same time, and what’s more, t hey decided to ‘tie the knot’ at the same time and place you do! You feel all warm and ‘glowy’ inside! But you don’t neglect the financial aspects, because you now are covered against the despoliation of your savings by the ‘Wicked Baron Grumpy Brown’ whose big axe with the ‘chancellor’ engraved down the haft would otherwise have come calling for a 40% slice of your home and savings if one of you kicked the bucket!

So, all’s well that ends well? Not so? Why are you unhappy? Because you’ve just found out that two really old ladies, sisters nearly in their nineties are gonna’ get slammed by that very same ‘Grumpy Brown’ because they aren’t covered by that legislation! That’s New Labour, good to their Bent Friends, like Passport Mandy; but really stern on the unfortunate people who just don’t fit into their little pigeon-holes properly!!

“Wanna’ buy a Eurofighter, Mohammed?”

Heard and read quite a bit about the latest blackmail cum smash-and-grab robbery nodded through by this so-called Government of ours. I refer of course to the disgraceful termination of the Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) enquiry into allegations that BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defence company, paid over £60 million into a slush fund account for the Saudi Royals!

Now I always thought that if you place a law on the Statute books, you then get to persecute prosecute any offender, like when the full weight of the law descended on Steve Thorburn for the horrendous offence of selling a pound of apples instead of 225 grams of apples! So when the SFO is alerted by the BBC that things are slightly less then sunny in the Saudi camp, they decide to ‘go for it’ and start their investigations. But when the Saudi royals who have lived high on the hoof in Europe, screwing all the local bum-boys and blonde whores in the process, while being all ‘koranic’ and simple-life-style-guys in their shithole of a country get to hear that the sniffers have started looking at the Swiss bank accounts, they get all shirty and demand of their paid-for servant Tony Bliar that he stops the enquiry in it’s tracks, and just let the money flow!

So the question must be asked, is it one Law for the Steve’s of this country, and another for the money-dumpers who supplied cash to the drunken Royal arsehole bandits who rule in Saudi Arabia?

Football headlines…..Latest!

I read that Brazil is hoping to host the 2014 World Cup, and they have just submitted an ‘Intent’ letter to FIFA today.

 If they really want to do things correctly, why not add a ‘post-script’ to the letter, saying something along the lines of “South Africa seems to be losing the plot, give us the word and we’ll do the 2010 tournament just to show we’re on the ball!” 

They’re everywhere, I tell you!

WARNING:

Police are urging visitors to the city centre to be especially vigilant for a new gang operating a slick routine that is aimed at stealing from unwary persons. They say that the gang usually comprises four members.  While the three younger ones, all appearing to be cute and innocent, divert their “mark” (or intended target) with a show of friendliness and fun, the fourth the eldest of this gang of criminals – sneaks in from behind the person’s back to expertly rifle undetected through their pockets and bags for any valuables being carried. The attached picture taken from CCTV operating in the inner city shows the gang in operation.

Alert courtesy of my daughter Alice!

The Queen’s Shilling (adjusted for inflation!!)

 

Dropped over to the ever-excellent EU Referendum, and sighted a chilling little piece about how much our soldiers are really valued, and the cost of that Value!

Laugh a little, then a lot!

Check out this wonderful site, where the ‘comments’ column writers have gone just a little ‘Bananas’!

Honour the Honourable!

It’s ‘Tommy this’ and ‘Tommy that’, and ‘kick him out the brute’, but it’s saviour of his country when the guns begin to shoot!

Those prophetic words from Kipling illustrate the old, and now newer versions of the British attitude towards those who wear the Uniform, and swear an oath of fealty to the Crown. From the disgraceful barring of two Royal Marines from an ‘Australia’ themed bar, through the stupid and silly threats to subject soldiers who are literally fighting for their lives to civilian criminal trials, based on biased and corrupt witness statements, which almost always collapse under scrutiny. We have some of the best fighting men under arms in the world, and we treat them like dirt! We tell them to fight the wars which we choose, and then we spit on their service! The politicians love to get their pictures taken alongside the men and their guns, but dislike having to supply the right gun, or indeed having to pay for both the rifle and the bloody bullets. I do not have a great deal of time for the B.N.P., but their memorable election broadcast of eighteen months ago hit the spot, with it’s depiction of the drunken ex-soldier condemned to shuffle through the dustbins, while the economic migrants and bogus asylum-seekers get the council accommodation which he felt should have been his!

All honour to the British Armed Forces, who do a really crappy job in a professional manner, despite being let down left, right and centre by a pack of lying, devious, useless political parasites!

Why are your eyes closed?

Visited this little site, where they were announcing that anyone who didn’t PRAY for five times every day will be beheaded.

Now if that’s what they really want, fair enough, but how do they 

intend to PROVE that someone is not praying!!! 

Sad but True!!

Found a comment upon another site altogether which really stoked my laughter senses!

The page was detailing the Seven New (Garbage) Wonders of the World, and the comment was:-

 Posted by: Eva Sideridou | Tuesday, December 05, 2006 at 03:34 PMI would like to nominate my little village in western Wisconsin.

It is so dull living here it’s a wonder we still have 400 people left. One of our taverns recently had one of those tacky sign boards on the street in front of their establishment that said:

Drink here. Bull (the manager) need the money.

Wonderfully Tacky.

“…A Day Which Will Live In Infamy…”

At the going down of the sun, we shall remember them!

Get your fist out of my wallet!

Found a well-written and -argued site which is calling for a real hard look at Political Funding, inclusive of all the dodges thought up by the Real Experts.

 

I commend it as a good read to all interested in open politics! 

Bend over, this won’t hurt at all!

So we’re gonna’ be told to love Europe! Fair enough, but it’s always nice to know who is doing the telling! It’s gonna’ be Howell James!

Whitehall’s £180,000-a-year head of communications Howell James is a close friend of EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Mr James is supposed to have had a relationship with Mr Mandelson’s partner, Brazilian Reinaldo da Silva, before Mr Mandelson met him.

 Put rather more bluntly, was Howell James screwing the Brazilian, (the one who wasn’t shot for being Brazilian) before the Brazilian met and started screwing Peter Mandelson? 

 

Now that’s what’s known as ’finding the soap early!’

Booker’s been booked!

The following copy comes via EU referendum, and it’s contributor Christopher Booker.

Apparently he submitted this to the Sunday Telegraph , and he was advised that it had been spiked! Reasons are available here, and also here!

In other words, don’t rock the bloody boat!!

“As David Cameron ends his first year as leader of the Opposition, there are clear signs that the greatest gamble in modern British politics has not come off. The little group of ex-public schoolboys who last year hi-jacked the Conservative Party have seemed to gamble on just one strategy. List everything the Party used to stand for – low taxes, the family, rolling back the power of the state, encouraging business, upholding our defences, curbing criminals, common sense – then go for the opposite.

The essence of the gamble has been the belief that, in wooing the support of Lib Dems, would-be greenies, Guardian readers and the supposed “soft centre”, they could take their supposed “core” supporters for granted. But as support for Cameron falters, all the evidence seems to suggest that those wished-for new recruits to his “Not The Conservative Party” are not forthcoming, while the Party’s former natural supporters are left baffled, dismayed and increasingly angry.

All this was neatly symbolised by the recent photo-opportunities staged by the three men now competing for the role of Britain’s prime minister. Mr Blair and Mr Brown, aware that defence and national security (not long ago rating 34 percent on a Mori poll) still rank very much higher as voter priorities than “environmental” issues (only 8 percent), flew out to the Iraq and Afghan battle-zones to pose in front of the largest guns they could find. Mr Cameron, at the same time, flew out to the Sudan, in Lord Ashcroft’s CO2 emitting private jet, to be pictured cuddling a little refugee child. It was the “Men from Mars” against “the Boy from Venus”. “Darfur Dave” did not come well out of the contrast.

The tragedy is that, confronted by the most corrupt, hypocritical, inefficient, illiberal, discredited government in history, what millions of voters are looking for is an alternative which might put an end to the sleazy, self-regarding sham of the Blair era by displaying some “masculine” firmness: in cutting back on the bloated public sector and the out-of-control bureaucracy which is destroying our health service, education and police; which might encourage enterprise; which might restore democracy to local government; bring back some balance into our public finances; sort out the shambles into which our Armed Forces are sliding; uphold Britain’s national interest, as we suffocate under the malfunctioning system of government represented by the European Union.

In other words, what much of the country is crying out for is a party which represents precisely those values which Mr Cameron’s Not-The-Conservative Party seems so hellbent on abandoning. As for what he stands for instead, almost the only clear message Darfur Dave seems to have put over to the voters is his sentimental “save the planet” greenery, on which his dotty little gimmicks and practical ignorance have simply made him a laughing stock.

What many voters sadly begin to conclude is that Dave and his cronies seem so hopelessly ill-equipped to take on the serious business of government that, if we have to choose between one gang of PR merchants and another, better stick with the devil we know. Hence the evidence of the latest polls appearing to show that the gamble has failed. Ever larger become the number of would-be Conservatives sorely tempted to join that 40 percent who already feel so alienated from politics that they just stay sullenly at home. But the Guardian readers are scarcely flocking to replace them. So where does all this leave our country?”

Get the HELL out of my life!!!

Got wind of the latest ‘idea’ from ‘Big Brother’ over at Hewitt’s lot, in other words your friendly, ever-helpful National Health Service!

 Seems as if they’re planning to upload all our details, from the slightly annoying details about ingrown toenails to the devastating news that you have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or condition; onto the national Database where anyone, and I do mean anyone, can either get fulldetails, or a damn good idea, about your full personal circumstances, through the click of a mouse!

 NOt only that, but your details, heavily disguised with an encryption code which can be broken by a nine-year-old with a lap-top, will be freely available to MORI and anyone else who cares to fork out the money!

 IN order to delay the inevitable, the reader is invited to got to THE BIG OPT-OUT site, download the prepared letter, and send off to your G.P. immediately, so you cannot be regarded as JUST ANOTHER BLOODY NUMBER!

British Structural Engineering!

Watched a house-choice type programme on a Digital channel a few weeks back, which was first broadcast on Channel Four, and I do have to admit that I was not only impressed, but also deeply depressed! Allow me to explain, if I may. The show, named Grand Designs, features a set of buyers looking to achieve their dream home by new build, site renovation or drastic alteration to existing property. In this particular case, the elderly couple had lived in their existing home for over thirty years, and deciding to change, went the whole way with a German-designed and built house, pre-manufactured and equipped in a factory in Bavaria, then shipped to England and erected in a week, with full fitting and completion in another four weeks. Now there are approximately similar companies in Britain offering a similar service to the Germans, but in the real world that we live in, I know which crowd I would be heading for! Watching the German teams in the factory was sad enough, but watching the installation crew at work in Surrey depressed me beyond belief. Why? Because not only did they know their jobs backwards, they worked, and worked as a team; beating the pants off any team which might be assembled from anywhere in Britain. What gives me the right to say this? Well, around twenty-odd years of watching in quiet horror as I was expected to accept second-rate, shoddy work on site, of repeatedly asking for things to be done correctly two and three times before anything was achieved to correct the appalling work done in the first place! The German finishing and fitting team were expected to perform to exacting standards, and when their own inspection supervisor found one item which didn’t meet his standards, the offending item was stripped down and re-done, immediately! You couldn’t even hope for such a reaction on a British-run job, mainly for fear that the appropriate men wouldn’t walk off the job in a huff, and never come back again! The product, manufactured in a factory to exacting measurements and tolerances, came together like a Swiss watch, and the German team not only caught up on a delay caused by the non-appearance of the crane, they beat their own estimates in order to leave the site on time!

I can only tell the reader of a similar building experiences in Inner London; though not a house but a far larger and more complex job; it was supposed to be made to similar tolerances, and when I say that I found the British erection teams both shoddy, ill-trained and totally useless in their approach to the job, that was only par for the course. It was when I was inspecting on-going work that I really felt sad, because this was work which they claimed was finished, and ready for inspection. When I say that there was an inch gap at one end of a structural beam joint (as pictured!), I do not exaggerate! There was also an attempt to get an H-beam, installed as part of the same roof structure, past my review, while having been installed with a bend in it! The bend was there so it would fit into the rest of the ill-assembled structure! There are simply no comparisons between the two nations. One bunch, the British, have to be checked and checked again, the Germans could be left alone to do their work, in the knowledge that it would be done, to standards, to tolerances, and to Project requirements!